


From Crisis to More

by Merfilly



Series: Dinah's DCU Free For All Table [2]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 13:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1349206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets set against Identity Crisis and canon after that point</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Crisis to More

Hal lost his mind. Dinah nearly lost her life. Ray wound up divorced. Ollie lost everything he loved, and his will to live. Carter lost his life and his identity. Zatanna lost her father and never was able to find personal happiness. And then there was Barry, cast into the role of galactic savior at the cost of his short-lived happiness.

To say there was a curse on them was slightly understating the matter, but Dinah believed fully they had brought it all on themselves with two votes. And...in some ways, she knew good and well it had been deserved punishments, maybe close to being even retribution for their violation of a trusting friend.

* * *

She watched the cracks begin, with the first whispers of Light and Sue and then the fight against Deathstroke. She saw them spread, as the Titans, with reason, pulled back from them in distrust after Light attacked them.

The Key's attack on the League, and her working so desperately with Ollie to save Dawn, and the argument after it with Bruce? All of it eroded what faith she had ever possessed on the League's ability to function through anything.

But it was seeing the pattern falling into place, through Oracle's eyes, that truly rammed home how useless every step she'd taken since she failed to sway her teammates from what they'd done to Light was.

Feeling useless was not something Dinah coped well with.

* * *

"Bruce."

"Canary." 

She winced, but continued across the cave floor to where he stood. "I can't fix that."

"No."

"But..." She took a deep breath, and J'onn put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "I want..."

"What?"

"I want to show you what happened, fully. Because...it is not just guilt that made us vote that way. Please?"

Bruce looked at her, then at J'onn who nodded. Slowly, he took a hand and placed it in hers when she reached out.

"I think...yes, I'd like to know, for myself, just how my friends found themselves capable of doing that."

"Thank you," she whispered, before she let J'onn take them both into a deep mind link, sharing her guilt, her shock, all the emotions of that event, so that Bruce could begin to understand how unhinged it all got.

* * *

The pain of dealing with Crisis and everything that had happened before it was enough to drive Roy Harper into the desert, taking his daughter in hopes they both might find healing. His Dineh contacts, family in a more remote, extended way than he ever wanted, were willing to bring him into the fold, to work with the trauma still afflicting Lian over her ordeal.

He barely had the cast off when the call came from Eddie Fyres on his emergency cell phone, telling him Star City was in hell, Ollie might be dead, Speedy and Connor were both missing, and did Roy give a damn.

"Fyres, go fuck yourself," Roy snapped off. "Half my people got killed, mutilated, or lost by this shit. If both my sibs are missing, Ollie ain't dead, and they'll pop up when they're good and ready." He then hung up the phone in a temper, and counted to ten in Dineh, English, and Spanish with a bad accent.

"You're counting." The very tanned face of his daughter was looking up at him with worry, even as she held her ever-present swear box out to him. Roy found his temper cooling fast as he dug for the two dollars he owed her. Any more phone calls like that, and he'd be broke before they rolled back into Flagstaff.

"Yeah, baby."

"Call Aunt Dinah then."

As the little girl wandered off to find more 'treasures', Roy considered. Dinah had been through as much hell, but for all his temper, he did want to know what was up...at least on the family. Dinah would either know, or she'd find out, he was certain. And maybe she'd have news about other people...he cut that thought off. He really needed to let the sun bake all thoughts of Dick Grayson out of his head...no matter how badly it hurt to think of them as 'over' even as friends.

His phone was still in his hand, and he glanced at his finger hovering over the '8', Dinah's speed dial number. He almost didn't punch it, but he owed...something to Speedy for setting up such a screwed up legacy for her, and Connor was like a brother. He tapped and held the key until it began to connect, frowning when it took more than three rings for her to answer. That meant that either she was busy...or she was trying to hide things from him again. He didn't so much resent that tendency in her as see it as proof that she still considered him a kid.

"Hello, Roy. Thought you were on the rez." Dinah's breathing was even; that meant she was hiding something as it had been the fifth ring picked up on.

"I am, Di. Know anything about Star City?"

There was a brief pause and then a clatter of keyboard keys before Dinah answered. "Oracle says all safe, if not well, and she's trying to route someone in to clean up." More clacking of keys told him that Dinah was likely irked for being out of the loop. Of course, that Dinah was out of contact with CNN meant something dramatic.

"Di...where are you?"

"The mountains. Imposing on a friend's hospitality." Her voice said that the friend in question was likely not pleased by something. 

"Alright...Di, you'd tell me if something was wrong, right?"

There was a long pause, and then Dinah made a soft sound. "Boy-o, are you at the same camp you used when you took me out?"

"Yes."

"Then I should see you in a day or so."

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah had struggled through cleanup and memorial services alike. There was one thing about being a senior League member, a former JSA member, and a Bird that she had trouble with from time to time, and that was saying no when any of them called. As the missing trickled in, she was relieved, until the day came when Alan Scott had to tell her about Jade.

She had sworn 'never again', her heart hurting from the loss of two many members of her family and her friends. The training she had been doing by correspondence with Lady Shiva had not been enough. She had to be more, had to reach that full potential Sensei had seen in her.

Two days later, she and Shiva had been in a cabin not far from Richard Dragon's, and Dinah had only been in contact via cellular modem and phone. Oracle had been very much against her plan, but it hadn't been Oracle's choice to make.

Training, day in and day out. Dieting to the strict list of foods Richard approved. Fighting, sometimes for her life, against Shiva. With Shiva, one never really knew when it would change from training fight to the real thing. It made the lessons stick better, Shiva had told her.

Richard's training was even worse, though. He made her turn her senses outward, to learn more of her environment than she ever had. This would have been a good thing, Dinah thought, except she had needed to remove the distraction of her inner thoughts, and they had been in conflict and chaos.

The day before Roy's call came, Richard had told her not to come back to his cabin. That he could go no further with her, and she had known why.

She could not let go of herself, to become what Shiva was, to be as Richard was. That core knot of caring and guilt and remorse would not give way to peace.

Which had led to the fight with Shiva that had shown her the truth. Her path was not to be the way of denial. Like Bruce, she was who she was, and part of that demanded the ability to be a part of her environment, not an observer. As she and Shiva had fought, Dinah had kept up. All the rest of the training, molding in with the lifetime worth of experience, and Dinah's sheer heart had let her take Shiva to a standstill.

Roy's call had broken the dam on what to do next, with both women leaving the cabin less than an hour after Dinah had spoken to her Boy-o.

`~`~`~`~`

Roy had Lian in front of him, showing her how to fletch the arrows she had helped him make when the surprisingly brunette woman came into view, dressed in a pair of khakis, hiking boots, and a tee-shirt that hugged her curves like a second skin. The broad hat and sunglasses completed her look, and he had to grin; he wouldn't have to fuss about bare legs and cactus needles. She came right into camp, shrugged her ruck off, and sat down on a rock to wait. Only when Lian had finished inlaying the feather did she wriggle free of her daddy and go hug her favorite Aunt hard.

"Daddy counted yesterday. Three languages. And Aunt Miri would say he needs practice," Lian told Dinah.

"Is that so?" 

Roy looked over at her...and really noted the way she looked. The hard lines of muscle had always been hidden under smooth feminine curves, but right now Dinah looked as hard core as an Olympic athlete could, all tone and muscle and so little body fat it almost hurt him to think about it.

"Been busy?" he asked, after a swallow of water to hide his unease.

"Yes." She reached over and brushed the back of her fingers along his scruffy cheek. It made them both smile, though Roy ducked his head a bit. "Talk about it after Lian wears me out, okay, Boy-o?"

"Alright, Di."

Somehow, it really didn't matter just what they wound up talking about from that point. Because when Roy looked back at her, watched her with his baby girl, he realized something very important.

She wasn't going to hide her pain this time. And maybe, just maybe, he'd finally be able to help her half as much as she'd helped him.

* * *

Dinah had been all smiles when she invited Hal to join her for lunch, so Hal hadn't thought much of it. He had to admit that the woman he now worked with was a far cry from the brat she'd been, harping on the way the JSA had been, or even from the complacent woman that had dated his best friend ~~and lover~~ for years.

She chatted at him for a time about Roy, about the League, even asked how he was coping with what he'd been through in his civilian life.

But he was jerked fully to attention when she veered onto the conversation of Oliver Queen, whom he'd been seeing again and helping conspire to get Dinah and Roy both on to the bigger things they deserved.

"I'm thinking of moving to Star City, seeing how Ollie's doing."

Hal nodded. "Moving there, just to see how he's doing?" he probed wryly, but his throat was dry. He knew that was what Ollie had been hoping for, going so far as to actually turn down an offer of sex from Hal.

"Well, more, if Ollie will think it over this time." Dinah looked down at her plate, speared a piece of broccoli, and ate it, carefully washing it down with water before speaking again. "What do you think he'd say to me moving there?"

"Guess he'd be happy to hear it," Hal said. "You know he's crazy for you."

"I know." Dinah looked up into his eyes, and he noted that battle hardness she had acquired in her time away. "Hal..."

"Yes, Dinah?"

"You're one of my best, oldest friends in some ways. I love you as a hero, trust you to have my back out there...but if you do anything to jeopardize any relationship Ollie and I have, this time, I will wipe the floor with you," she promised him in no uncertain terms. "So if you and he already are, like you were then, tell me before I set my sights fully on him."

Hal swallowed hard, his chest hurting...and the shock that she had KNOWN slammed into him. He felt ashamed, because she really hadn't deserved that, not from either of them. "He's waiting, hoping for you," Hal admitted.

"Then we understand each other?"

"Yeah, Dinah."

* * *

Barbara looked after Dinah with complete confusion, trying to figure things out long after Dinah was gone and once she wasn't needed by her current operatives.

"Known killer," she whispered, thinking of Kate's checkered history...and coming up with a flat out denial that Dinah could have ever been so hypocritical. Of course, very few people could actually get to the Seattle police records, and those incidents had been hushed rather than allowing the PD to receive a public affairs black eye. Oracle, though, knew. A drug gang's warehouse blown up, members outright shot, several fatalities was one point. A second was the serial child rapist who was remanded into custody...and minutes later died because the van he was secured in slid into the harbor due to a faulty brake set.

That didn't even touch the early on arguments between herself and Dinah about the right amount of force to use when Birds first started, or how many times Babs had honestly thought Dinah was about to step way over the line.

"Oracle to Batman...we may have an impostor on the League."

"Who?" He was not one to take that kind of accusation lightly.

"Black Canary."

* * *

Dinah Lance had a temper. But, for the most part, few people ever truly saw it. It was one of those legendary things...often mentioned, rarely seen.

Only the JLI had ever been ever to provoke it in public. Well, Guy Gardner in specific.

It might not have been the wisest thing, though, for someone to have let it leak to her ears that Guy had opened a betting pool on when and how the marriage she and Ollie had began was going to end.

Or the side one of just who it was Ollie was going to cheat on her with.

The five foot three woman, clad in her latest costume with all the gold accents gleaming bright, strode into Warriors with full intent of mutilating the proprietor. The square set of her shoulders, the firm set of each step, and the veritable sparks coming off her angry features let everyone in the bar know this was going to be good.

Guy saw her coming, stood up off his stool, and smiled warmly at her. 

"Now, Canary..."

He got nothing further out, as her fist connected before the green energy had even encased his hand, and he fell flat out.

"Makes up for the one-shot punch I missed," she said, glaring at the patrons. "Better get your money back, everyone, off the bets about me and my husband. I'm well capable of handling him just the way I want." For emphasis, she glared at Guy's prostrate form, then stalked right back out.

* * *

"Tell me what's on your mind, Pretty Bird?" Ollie asked, as he held a very quiet woman in his arms. She turned, so she could face him, but stayed in his lose hold in their bed.

"Thinking about the future. Now that we have Connor back, and things seem to be settling down..."

"And..."

She leaned in and kissed him softly. "I won't be League chairwoman forever," she said softly. "And...I have no more trauma, Ollie."

It took the archer a long moment to realize what she was saying, and then he crushed her tight and kissed her with every ounce of passion he felt.

He would definitely cooperate in that future she was offering.

* * *

Five feet.

That was all she needed to cover.

She pulled herself forward, trying desperately not to cry out as her body protested.

Four to go.

She bit her lip until she knew it was bleeding, as she pulled herself over a rise in the ground.

Three.

She could feel each new scrape in her legs as the gravel dug through the rents in her fishnets.

Two.

Her hands were raw as her fingernails dug into the gravel and dirt for more leverage.

One.

She could almost reach her comm gear, almost lay a finger on the panic button where it lay exposed to her, taunting her.

She pushed herself forward one more time, a thought of just how Oracle would be there already, as strong as she was.

Then the world was black, as her attacker caught up.

So close, but not close enough.

* * *

Dinah Lance in the hospital was never a good thing, but they had finally managed to chase Roy and Ollie out of there. In fact, Dinah had insisted she was fine, just tired, and would everyone get the hell out of her room.

Diana's nerves had pricked at the thought of her being alone, when she was such a visible hero, with very little in the way of secret identities. She had come back, thinking just to lend a sisterly comfort and guardian presence, and had to freeze outside the door, hearing the sounds of another woman talking in low, soft tones to the injured League woman. A small laugh rippled from Dinah, showing the visitor was quite welcome, and Diana started to leave...until she caught the scent. The perfume lingering the air was one she had smelled on Bruce in the past.

As if on cue, she heard Dinah protesting something softly, with a quiet 'Selina!' confirming Diana's thoughts.

The Amazon could not help but wonder if the Bat knew about the Kitty and the Birdie.


End file.
